


Numb

by ObsidianJade



Series: Burn 'verse [3]
Category: Bon Jovi
Genre: Implications of mind control, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Other, implications of potential non-consentual relationship, offscreen minor character death, references to non-consentual memory alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We aren't born with the capacity for feeling.  But somehow, we do anyway.  </p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/346204">Burn</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/591563">Trust</a>.  Jon gives his side of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numb

We don’t feel.

Not like a human does, anyway. For Us, there is no such thing as a visceral sensation or an emotional epiphany. It’s all echoes, ghosts of emotion and sensation that we steal from the Reals, the regular people, the people like you and the audience and Richie and Teek. 

Unless we’re Sharing. That? That’s how we feel. Everything the Real feels goes through us as well. The touch of our lips on theirs, our body on theirs, every sensation, physical and emotional. 

I can steal a memory from someone as easy as breathing, just glance into their eyes and tear it out of their mind, and they’d never know the difference. I did, too, for a while. Living vicariously through memories of lovers, stolen touches, pretending I could feel the ghosts of affection and even love on my skin, in what passes for my heart. 

It gets old quick, lemme tell you. You Reals are so sensitive, your skin, your hearts, all of you. You feel everything. You can take so much pleasure in everything, your food, your friends, the sun on your skin and dancing in the goddamned rain. 

Us? We dance in the rain, and all we get is wet. We’re numb. 

I was getting sick of it, back then. Chase the so-called excitement that we drained off a few dozen drunken morons in filthy dive bars across half a goddamned continent, and you’d get sick of it, too. Lemma and I were starving then, sucking alcohol fumes out of people too indifferent to care about what we were singing. The honest truth is, I could have given up that night. Might well have, if _he_ hadn’t walked in. 

Richard Stephen Sambora. Cheesy as hell, but when I felt him, I understood what all those idiots in romance novels meant about one person making the sun shine through the clouds. 

I felt him the second he walked through the door, his spirit so bright in my senses it was almost blinding, almost bright enough to hurt. 

The fact that he could make me feel like that, when I wasn’t touching him, wasn’t even actively drinking from him, that was enough to tell me what he was, and it was something I’d never expected to see, not in this world. 

A Pure Soul. 

You’re laughing at the fact I’m capitalizing that, I can feel that much from here, and you can knock it the hell off. If I emphasize something, that means it’s important, so _pay attention_.

A Pure Soul is exactly what it sounds like - a person that’s so naturally good, so true to what they tell us God intended, charity and goodwill and all that shit, that wickedness can’t taint them. 

Even you Reals can tell Pure Souls sometimes, if you let yourselves. If you’ve ever met a person on the street, some random stranger that just looking at them makes you feel happy, like there’s hope for the world and humanity and all that? Chances are good they’re Pure. 

And before anyone goes squealing about unicorns, no, it has nothing to do with frigging virginity. And why the hell an animal whose main feature is a very prominent pointy thing ever got elected to represent virginity is beyond me, but never mind. 

The amount of energy we can get from a person depends on the state of their spirit. Happy, enthusiastic people - like the crowds at a rock concert, yes, congratulations, you win a cookie, now shut up - put out a lot of energy. Drunk, numb, depressed people put out none, or at least none that we can use, which is why we don’t do Evanescence covers. 

Well, one of the reasons, anyway. If Lemma doesn’t stop humming ‘Wake Me Up Inside,’ I’m going to break his brain until he thinks he’s a chimpanzee and give him a set of bongo drums to play with. He can be Tico’s assistant. 

But the quality of the energy we can take also depends on the quality of the people’s souls. Nasty people put out nasty energy, plain and simple. I’ve fed off nasty people before, in lean times, and yes, just like a blood-sustained vampire, I can choose how much energy I take. 

If the person deserves it, I can take enough that their body doesn’t have the strength to keep their lungs drawing air or their heart pushing blood. 

Rapists, for the record, put out a _lot_ of energy, but I was sick for a week afterwards. It was like drinking rotten motor oil. 

A Pure, though, they frigging _radiate_ power. It’s like heat off an incandescent light bulb. And right when I was at my lowest, one fell in my lap.

It’s amazing what Fate will do when you’re about to give up.

It was easy to sneak a suggestion into his mind, even with my energy as low as it was. He was fascinated by me; maybe he could sense something of the Otherness around me, or maybe he just wanted my ass. I never asked. It never mattered. And if I don’t ask, it gives him one secret to call his own. 

You know the story from there. He charmed his way into a tryout, I dropped Snake and took him on. As my guitarist, as my best friend, as my right hand. As.... well, as damned near everything. 

Anybody that knows me will tell you I’m a possessive son of a bitch, and they’d be right. My things are my things, my people are my people. When I find others of Us, I give them as much protection and help as I can. Now Lemma and I have been working alongside each other for a long time. We know each other’s quirks and we cover each other’s backs, but he’s not my _partner_. Even without the connotations of domestic partnership, it’s too intimate a term for him. 

Richie’s my partner. Ever since I met him, I never questioned that. But one of Us, Sharing with a Pure? It’s not even supposed to be possible. They shouldn’t be able to take stolen energy, energy with the taint of Us twisted through it. The fact that Richie swallowed it down, drank it like water that first time, shocked the hell outta me. 

Until I realized that if it was water, it might as well have been boiling. He screamed, that first time. 

It was the only time in my very, very long life that I ever felt true remorse. 

But he forgot - with or without my help, I honestly don’t even remember - and took it again, and again, and again. And it got easier, I could tell that much, but it never stopped hurting him. So he started hurting it.

Alcohol’s the surest way to kill emotions. Any of Us can tell you that. And when you feed off emotions - directly or not - one thing you don’t want to be doing is drinking. 

More than once, I thought I’d lose Richie to it. But he came back to me, every time, right up to the last, and I could hear his thoughts. Scared and angry and ready to give up, the same way I had been that first night I saw him. 

So I told him to make a choice, and he looked me in the eye. 

It’s simple work, for me, to tweak a couple of thoughts, make a single strand of emotion a little bit selfish, a little bit ugly, a little less perfect. 

A little less _Pure_. 

Lemma laughs at me. He says I’m the only being in the world who can manage to make altruism selfish. 

He’s probably right, and I don’t care. I’ve got Richie, and that feels pretty damned good.

**Author's Note:**

> So, let's play Spot-The-Song-Reference! You get two clues - 1, it's a song I have referenced before, in another Bon Jovi fanfiction, and 2, it's not a Bon Jovi song. Happy hunting!
> 
> (NB - I don't dislike Evanescence; WMUI actually has an embarrassing number of plays on my iTunes. But it's not exactly _cheerful_ music, now, is it.)


End file.
